well, let me give you a simple explanation of why I would want to do this. I want to keep mail that I don't specifically delete forever. And, we use a third-party server to handle a large number of mailboxes/addresses and supporting a number of domain names. The space on that server is not unlimited. On 11 Mar 2011, at 17:32, Benny Kj?r Nielsen wrote:
> Hi Barry, > > first of all, thanks for trying out MailMate. Also thanks for using > the mailing list. Even though MailMate handles mailing lists quite > well, this mailing list has had very little traffic. Therefore, it may > also be received by people who have not checked out MailMate in a long > time (but joined the mailing list at some point). So, before answering > your question, I just want to state that MailMate is at version 1.0.2 > now. For any recipients on this mailing list who want to catch up, the > following links may be useful: > > http://freron.com/ > http://blog.freron.com/2011/mailmate-1-0-released/ > http://tracker.mailmate-app.com/ > http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/34543/mailmate > > Currently, the mailing list has 47 members. > > Ok, now back to your message. > > On 11 Mar 2011, at 22:42, Barry Chern wrote: > >> Is there any way or ways I can use this and still keep all the >> messages I want on my hard drive forever without having them kept on >> the server (for more than a short period of time). > > A prelude to my answer: I get (variations of) this question quite > frequently and I must admit I am still a bit surprised. Using IMAP > only for temporary storage reduces IMAP to a complicated variant of > POP3. MailMate does not support POP3 by design, that is, I believe > IMAP should replace POP3 for most people. As I have stated elsewhere, > if MailMate was to support POP3, it would most likely be in a way such > that the retrieved messages were put directly into an IMAP mailbox. > > So, my preferred answer would be: I really think you should consider > to use IMAP as it was intended, if possible. > > My practical answers are: > > 1. The best way to keep messages ?locally? only, is to run your > own IMAP server either on your own machine or your local network and > move the messages to an account on this server. The disadvantage is > that each message will be located both on the server and within > MailMate, but you could also think of that as a backup system. > > 2. Second-best is kind of a hack. If importing messages into MailMate, > you can first create a mailbox on some IMAP account and then take that > mailbox offline before importing messages into it. Then MailMate will > not try to upload the messages to the server. Note that you cannot > just move messages from an online mailbox to an offline mailbox and > then expect the messages to be removed from the server. MailMate does > not delete messages on the server before it is sure that the messages > have reached the destination. You can however delete the messages > server-side after moving them. > > I also have a selfish reason for wanting my users to use IMAP as it is > intended (or at least by using solution 1 above). If MailMate should > contain some bug that corrupts its internal database then it is much > easier for me to tell a user to start over by deleting everything and > then synchronize the accounts than it is to ask the user to locate any > local messages and re-import them into MailMate (which would also lose > any keywords applied to the messages). That said, MailMate does save > all messages in a simple disk folder hierarchy in standard raw message > format (.eml). > > Again, thanks for trying out MailMate. I'm sorry I couldn't give you a > more simple answer. > > And to everybody on the list: You are welcome to ask any questions you > like. Bugs and feature requests which do not seem relevant for many > users are probably better handled via the tracker > (http://tracker.mailmate-app.com). > > -- > Benny > _______________________________________________ > mailmate mailing list > mailmate at lists.freron.com > http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
